Dororo

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Dororo got me hooked right from the very first chapter.

Although this manga is almost 50 years and its art style it's kinda of old fashioned I think that it brings some charm to it.

The characters are likeable, (especially Dororo), the demons' design is really cool and the stories are great.

The story follows a really simple narrative. Dororo and Hyakkimaru reach a new village where a monster lays. They defeat the monster and Hyakkimaru gets back one body part. Even though it follows a "Monster of the week" approach I never felt that the manga was repetitive (and I am not a fan of monster of ... the week format). Besides that, the manga doesn't follow the "happy ending" cliche ( sometimes Hyakkimaru and Dororo are expelled from the village, a character dies, etc).

The reason why I don't rate Dororo 10/10 is because in the second half of the series it feels like the author was rushing to finish the story. The end was not bad but it could be way better and it left the impression that there was still a lot to explore.

I first discovered Dororo as anime (Dororo, 2019), and it was one of the best shows that year, if overshadowed by Kimetsu no Yaiba (2019). The source material is a manga by Osamu Tezuka serialized from 1967-1968.

I have read a few Tezuka works and this is probably the darkest one of those. Dororo is the story of a child whose organs sacrificed by his father to 48 demons for power. The child may have lost those body parts but not a strong will to live and with multiple prosthesis, survives to embark on a quest to recover those organs by slaying each demon for them. ... The name of that child is Hyakkimaru. Dororo is the name of the orphan thief who became his companion in that quest.

The manga is dark enough that the author adds a lot of puns, jokes, and fourth wall breaking references to add levity to it. It is not Tezuka's best work, part of it was the rushed ending due to cancellation. However, it is still better than most modern manga. Simply because he employed or originated a lot of manga tropes and storytelling techniques on display in this work.

The 2019 anime adaptation is the best way to enjoy this story. It fleshes out several of the background characters and adds more depth to the family conflict at the heart of it. The storytelling pace is resolved by reducing the number of demons from 48 to 12, allowing it to give it the satisfying ending it deserves.

If you still want to read the original manga, I suggest getting the all in one omnibus English edition by Vertical. It is a handy tome to have all of the Dororo chapters in one book.

Dororo – Spoiler Free – Mixed Feelings

TLDR
Story – 6/10 – 6 x 0.275 = 1,65
Art – 7/10 – 7 x 0.2 = 1,4
Characters – 5/10 – 5 x 0.225 = 1,125
Enjoyment – 6/10 – 6 x 0.3 = 1,8
Total: 5,975 -> 6

Story – 6/10
... There isn't much one can say about Dororo's story. It's short, uninteresting, and it was clearly rushed from a certain point onwards.
The story begins with the typical monster of the week trope, letting Hyakkimaru recover his body parts every time he kills demons, although this doesn't seem to advance the narrative whatsoever. The story has practically no changes because of Hyakkimaru’s newfound body parts. This is a shame, for it was a lost opportunity to make a compelling argument in a way for the narrative to advance.
On the other hand, vraisemblance is not a problem in Dororo, thankfully.
On a positive side note, the premise is very interesting and the story is coherent in itself, making for a very entertaining story until it was rushed. There are some very imaginative sequences and ideas that most certainly inspired mangas, such as the legendary Fullmetal Alchemist (Dororo’s back) or even Berserk (Hyakkimaru and Dororo/Guts and Isidro’s relationship).
However, one of the worst things about this manga is definitely the very rushed ending, where nothing makes sense. One does not even understand why the story ends the way it does, only for a ridiculous request made by Dororo that should never have been a driving force in the story – and, honestly, I never thought it would play a role whatsoever until I saw the ending. Instead of developing the ending better, the author opted to present a few panels just stating what happened after he finished the story. Again, it looked like the author got tired of Dororo and decided to rush everything.
As far as I know, the anime version of Dororo (2019) resolved some of these problems, which is why I recommend it over the original manga version.
Dororo also doesn't explore a very interesting gender question – which I won't spoil – in the last volumes of the manga. Again, this was a wonderful opportunity gone wasted.

Art – 7/10
Dororo’s art is quite good, being very easy to read and, sometimes, even quite detailed. The character design is impeccable, and it is easy to recognise characters from one another. Fight scenes are also very well done and are a statement of the author's quality as a mangaka – there is a reason why Osamu Tezuka is the “Godfather of Manga” after all. Page composition, however, is not the best, but one must keep in mind that this manga was made in the 60s, and so many of the things that we now take for granted weren't even theorised back then.

Characters – 5/10
Most characters are normal and without a firm personality, with the notable exceptions of the two main characters, Hyakkimaru and Dororo. There are important characters who play no role whatsoever in the story and could have been pivotal to the development of the story — as they are in the anime version of 2019.

Enjoyment – 6/10
Dororo is not a bad manga, although it is quite bland. It is entertaining, and the monster of the weak trope isn't all that boring – although I don’t quite like it personally; the problems arise in the second half of the manga, where everything is rushed. Although there are some delightful moments, they don't compensate for the bad. It is, nevertheless, a classic, but I cannot recommend it wholeheartedly as I did with some other classics that also have some important problems: since it is short, the best I can do is give it a mixed feeling stamp: it could have been way better than it is, but it is not deserving of a not recommended.